Simple date reformatting help

I've checked the archives and can't find the correct combination of clues for my problem...

I am relatively new to reading data directly from Excel and dbf files. I imported a dbf into a sas library and the date is formatted as for example, 06/04/13. Normally when I import SAS converts it to the integer automatically, but this time for whatever reason it has retained the mmddyy10. format. How do I reformat it to the simple integer value for a sas date?

Interestingly, by figuring this out I realized that I really dont't need to remember some formatting command I won't use very often, but instead just include the variable in a function and it will return as an integer

e.g.

datevariabe_2 = datevariable + 1 - 1;

and sure enough... it output it as the integer I was after.

by the by can anyone tell me why the information on this page doesn't work?